Trembling tycoons
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Where now, Xiao?
Feb 4th 2017 | HONG KONG
XIAO JIANHUA was not alone among mainland China’s mega-rich in his fondness for the Four Seasons hotel in Hong Kong’s financial district. It describes itself as “perfect for the business elite”, among whom Mr Xiao certainly ranks. Hurun Report, a rich-list compiler, named him last year as China’s 32nd wealthiest man, with a fortune of $6bn. He is reported to have made the hotel his home, on and off, since 2014. Yet the “luxurious and stylish sanctuary” of its suites, and Mr Xiao’s team of female bodyguards, may not have proved enough to protect him. He has now disappeared—snatched, very possibly, by mainland China’s security agents. The mystery has compounded worries in Hong Kong about the reach of China’s heavy-handed police.
Hong Kong’s own police, who supposedly enjoy independence from China’s, say they were told on January 28th that the mainland-born businessman had vanished. They say records show that Mr Xiao (pictured) crossed the border the previous day. On a social-media account operated by his company, Tomorrow Group, Mr Xiao said he was receiving medical treatment abroad and denied having been abducted to the mainland. But the South China Morning Post, a newspaper in Hong Kong, quoted a source close to him as saying the businessman was indeed in mainland China. Another unnamed source, quoted by the Financial Times, said Mr Xiao had called his family and told them that he had been taken by mainland police and that he was fine.
The case has drawn considerable attention in Hong Kong. Memories are fresh of the abduction a year ago of a bookseller from Hong Kong to the mainland by Chinese agents. He, as well as three associates who were detained while visiting the mainland, were eventually allowed to return to Hong Kong. But another colleague who was snatched from Thailand remains in custody on the mainland. China’s treatment of the booksellers appeared to be related to their trade in gossipy works about China’s leaders. It was the most blatant trampling on the autonomy of Hong Kong’s police since the territory’s return to China in 1997—at least, until now.
Mr Xiao is unlikely to draw as much sympathy. But businesspeople in Hong Kong will be watching closely. Some of them are familiar with the thuggishness of China’s police through their dealings on the mainland. With its far fairer legal system, Hong Kong has long been viewed as a haven—not least, by mainlanders like Mr Xiao (whose statement on social media this week said that he was also a Canadian citizen and had a diplomatic passport from an unnamed country).
It is unclear why the mainland’s police would want to question him. But his connections with China’s political elite, as well as his vast wealth—his company has business interests ranging from finance to information technology, property and mining—have made him a topic of much speculation. During the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 Mr Xiao led a pro-government student union at Peking University, the nerve centre of the unrest. That loyalty may have helped his rise to become “something of a banker for the ruling class”, as the New York Times described him in an investigative report in 2014.
If, as local media suggest, President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption drive has spilled over into Hong Kong, along with its settling of political scores, then Hongkongers would be right to be nervous. Many people on the mainland will be watching closely, too. As Mr Xiao’s career appeared to show at least until recently, it pays in China to be politically attuned.
